“The test marks are from last year’s maintenance crew,” Odessa said. “They measured that patch after a delivery truck slid in rain. I asked Silas whether the patch had been checked for the new class. He told me the question was irrelevant because race day would be dry.”

Caleb watched a volunteer drag a hay bale into place. The final corner was narrow. The rear carriage on Leo’s cart would allow the wheels to shift as he leaned. If the brake tightened during that shift, the whole cart could yaw in a direction the child did not expect.

“We need to make them run a demonstration,” Caleb said.

“A demonstration with nobody aboard,” Odessa replied. “And we need more than one witness, not because people enjoy drama, but because Silas knows how to turn every concern into an insult against the racers.”

She sat on a stool and massaged her knee. Caleb finally noticed swelling along the edge of her shoe.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“I stepped wrong last night while checking the patch. It isn’t the first bad knee I have owned.”

He crouched, helping her loosen the laces. A bruise had spread above the ankle. She protested when he suggested a medic, so he offered a compromise: she could keep arguing after the event nurse wrapped the joint. That drew the nearest thing to a smile he had seen from her.

On the way toward the first-aid tent, Caleb’s phone buzzed. Iris had seen a photograph of the damaged mailbox in a neighborhood group. Her message contained only three words: IS THAT OURS?

He called her instead of typing. She answered from a crowded university studio, where he could hear a sewing machine whirring.

“It looks awful,” she said. “Who did that?”

“Odessa.”

A long pause. “Our Odessa? The one who brings us pears?”

“Yes. She was trying to get me to come to the hill. There’s trouble with a race cart.”

Iris did not ask him whether the mailbox could be fixed. She said, “Is Leo driving?”

“Maybe.”

“He sent me pictures of some new suspension. I told him the axle looked odd. I couldn’t see why.”

Caleb stopped walking. “You have the pictures?”

“Sure. I’ll send them.”

He asked whether there were any from before the new assembly arrived. Iris said Leo had posted pictures of the original frame every week, because his engineering club had been following the build. She began sending them as they spoke.

Odessa listened, eyebrows raised. “Who taught your daughter to question a shiny part?”

“You did,” Caleb said. “When you showed her that loose brake on my old lawn tractor.”

“She remembers?”

“Apparently better than the men running this exhibition.”